Procter & Gamble announced Tuesday that it will start tracing and policing palm oil suppliers to end by 2020 its part in the destruction of rainforests.

The announcement comes one month after environmental group Greenpeace staged a stunning protest at the company's world headquarters Downtown.

Palm oil is a natural ingredient in everything from beauty supplies to detergents. On March 4, nine Greenpeace activists draped protest banners outside the P&G headquarters, objecting to the company buying palm oil from Indonesian suppliers linked to clearing rainforests to harvest the crop.

Under its new standards, P&G agreed to trace the origins of its palm oil and police its suppliers so none comes at the expense of rainforests. Previously, P&G had said it would work only with "responsible and sustainable" sources by 2015.

Advocates had criticized those standards as too lax. Even P&G acknowledged that just 13 percent of its supply met the standards.

"P&G's commitment to no deforestation in its palm supply chain is unequivocal," Len Sauers, P&G vice president of global sustainability, said Tuesday. "We are committed to driving positive change throughout the entire supply chain, not just for us, but for the industry and for the small farmers who depend on this crop."

"Greenpeace applauds P&G for making a much stronger commitment to sourcing sustainable palm oil," said Joao Talocchi, a Greenpeace palm oil campaigner. "The important thing now is for P&G to push all their palm oil suppliers to live up to these standards and do this as quickly as possible, in order to make a real difference in the rainforests of Indonesia."

The announcement Tuesday also halted a potential shareholder action against the company at its upcoming annual meeting in October. Boston-based Green Century Capital Management Inc. had planned to file a proposal urging tougher palm oil standards to be voted on by shareholders. It is now withdrawing that effort.

"With this move, P&G has clearly recognized and communicated to its suppliers that destroying the rainforest for palm oil poses an unacceptable risk to its brand and shareholder value," noted Lucia von Reusner, shareholder advocate at Green Century Capital Management.

Greenpeace praised P&G, L'Oreal, Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive and Kellogg's for giving themselves a 2020 deadline, but said that's too late. The group said that if Indonesian deforestation continues until 2020 it will wipe out more than 14,000 square miles of rainforest – enough to cover one third of the state of Ohio.

Greenpeace said General Mills, Mars and Ferrero have committed to no deforestation impact by next year.

P&G did not allude to Greenpeace or discuss the environmental group's influence on its new standards. The company previously had highlighted its membership in and compliance with an industry-led group, the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil.

Greenpeace says the problem with the Roundtable's standards is they only protect forests determined to have "conservation value" – a subjective criteria that is applied inconsistently. Greenpeace has criticized Pepsico, Johnson & Johnson, Kao and until now, P&G, for not going beyond Roundtable standards.

Greenpeace last year stepped up its lobbying efforts on the palm oil issue, trying to get companies to adapt tougher standards. Until last month's protest, Greenpeace said P&G was mostly unresponsive to its calls to toughen palm oil standards. The company had met with the environmental group once.

P&G said it will be challenging to establish a method for tracing all its palm oil and getting its suppliers to develop plans to eliminate deforestation.

"We believe setting realistic commitments with realistic time horizons is the way to truly make progress that will benefit all stakeholders," said P&G spokesman Paul Fox.

Since the protest, P&G and Greenpeace representatives have met in Washington, D.C., to discuss palm oil.

"These goals go beyond our current commitments," Sauers said. "P&G will continue to work with each of our suppliers, and we will invest in and work directly with small local farmers, where much of our supply comes from, to improve their production practices.

"This is the most complicated aspect of the palm supply chain, where P&G believes we can make a significant and lasting impact."